Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Obsidian - 1Minute's neck of the woods

Tide Change:

Did not know you were a knapper.

Might have been out of town but should have given me yell. We were up on the Steens fishing and just hanging out for a week+, and once out of the house/office, I'm completely out of touch.

Just took some points to a lady that runs a nearby gift shop yesterday. Seems out of towners will pay $15 an inch for knapped points. She wanted 20 to put on her shelves, and I sold two 3" points to a guy while I was there. At $90 for the two, I at least paid for the gas. They look really fine glued into a shadow box, but she wanted free standing striped transparent rock. Might get about a $900 check from her at the end of the summer.

We have several dispersed sources in the region with a variety of color. The largest lumps I'm aware of are in an obsidian flow at Paulina Lake with boulders the size of pickup trucks. One is not supposed to gather there, but it's mostly low-quality stuff I don't care to work anyway. The best material is really fine glass and even though a lot is striped there's no obvious grain when working it up. Have a fair amount of black stuff in the yard and scored some good chunks during our recent septic tank replacement.

Some of my endeavors when I have nothing else to do. I have to hammer these out of cobbles, as I don't own a rock saw. Most folks in the business have saws and cut out nice thin blanks before flaking off the surfaces. A great and challenging hobby requiring total concentration. One has to break off about a thousand pieces without really breaking things entirely. A relaxing way to escape the world's issues but it can get frustrating when one halves a 90% complete piece.











If there's a coin in the pic for scale it's a quarter. Sorry about that Chinese made ruler in the last image.

Have a good one,